The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison - Research Paper Example

[Your and Racial discrimination, stereotypicality or just a self-alienation syndrome, what made the invisible man so invisible? Introduction Loneliness is a part of every human being’s life. Nobody is exempt. All the individuals find themselves at times when they experience loneliness, no matter how strong their faith or spiritual beliefs are. Loss of loved one, making a tough decision, supporting an unpopular position, critical illness of a child, or sometimes even for doing something they know to be right; they can be isolated (“Loneliness” 1). The isolation can become really painful and unavoidable but what if we are surrounded with people who love us and on whom we can rely and we still feel lonely or alienated? This happens rarely but it does happen and in this kind of scenario we can totally lose our self respect, confidence and will to live. A similar scenario was faced by the narrator of the novel ‘the invisible man’. It is about the person who explains that his invisibility owes not to some supernatural cause of biochemical accident but instead to the reluctance of other people to notice him. He finds himself in a position where he considers himself as invisible among the people who are sleepwalking around him and thus can’t notice him (“Invisible man”). Alienation This above mentioned instance is also known as “Alienation". As stated in PsycINFO Database by A. Davids, Alienation is a syndrome composed of five interrelated dispositions: egocentricity, anxiety, distrust, pessimism, and resentment. Alienated individuals are "lone wolves," distrusting their fellow men and apprehensive and ominous about their own future. They tend to apperceive others in their social surroundings as being more alienated than they actually are, yet less alienated than themselves. It is also stated that the alienated person has a "weak ego structure as estimated by experienced clinical judgment." However, when talking about the narrator of ‘the invisible man’, we have to make it crystal clear that his case was different, yet he had most of the symptoms of being alienated as described above. The narrator isolated himself in his room which was a shut-off section of a basement where only white tenants were allowed to live, and disguised himself by wearing dark glasses and a hat. It was not because he had a weak ego structure but he did that because he found ‘white people’ his enemy. One of the reasons that a person can get himself into the state of loneliness is when he isolates himself from the world and decides to live alienated. It is really dangerous for anyone to isolate himself, so it was dangerous for narrator of ‘the invisible man’. As the character is seen willing to go to any extreme to get his pride back and to be ‘visible’ among the people who lived in the same country as he did. If we want to understand the alienation in a detailed manner, we have to look at the “ALIENATION, the Road to Despair” research which tells that self-conditioned alienation normally occurs in a sensitive and intelligent young person, although it can transpire in a person of any age, who as incurred a misanthropical attitude towards altruism wreaked by a dialectic materialistic philosophy which depicts that altruism and egoism are contradictory (Bacuzmo). As Nicholas Churchich states in his book “Marxism and alienation”; “On the one hand, self-alienation is presented as a spiritual, mental and psychological phenomenon reflected in the loss of personal identity, a divided self, a confused mind or in deviation form normality. On the other hand, self-alienation is conceived to be primarily and economic, ethical and socio political concept, a fact of man’s phenomenal instead of the spiritual or supernatural life (Churchich 102)”. Churchich further explains; “Self-alienated individual miss his moral freedom and become divided within himself and eventually feels powerless to realize his essential being. (Churchich 102).” This explains in what state of trauma the invisible man was. Social Discrimination There are several symbols used in the novel such as the gold coins, the briefcase and the letters, the coin bank, light, paint, the American flag tattoo and yams to illustrate the invisibility of African Americans in American culture and society. All of these elements depict the scenario the narrator finds himself in. All of these symbols represent different motifs in Invisible Man like racism, segregation, illusions about the American Dream, and socially constructed ideas about the identity. If you turn the pages of history, you will learn that back in early 1800s, more then two hundred slaves lived in the whitewashed shack, and many of their descendants stayed for more then hundred years after the Civil war. However, in the present time some black individuals have revolutionized the entire history of blacks. In the current time no black person can stand up and say that they are treated like the way they did in the past. In the most recent times when people left the hovels it was about 30 years back, they were those black natives who didn’t know or even imagined that one day a distant daughter of theirs (Michelle Obama) will one day become a part of the White House home. It’s not in the knowledge of everyone that Michelle Obama’s family tree on both sides lead to the roots of slavery. It was known that Michelle’s father had roots to slavery but then this fact came in to sight that even her routes with mother also connect to slavery (Swarns & Kantor). Further study of alienation and Narrators state of mind Just like Seidlitz stated in the American Masters database in year 2005; we can not misjudge the invisible man because he wasn’t an uneducated, inarticulate or angry person; instead he was educated, articulate and self-aware (Seidlitz). It all shows that the narrator did not become the reason of his own alienation but the world around him was not accepting him. As Costas & Fleming explain in their article “Beyond dis-identification: A discursive approach to self-alienation in contemporary organizations”, we can take the example of the actors where they become aware that their putative ‘real’ selves are paradoxically unreal and foreign. We draw inspiration from the concept of self-alienation to enlighten experiences beyond dis-identification, where actors distinguish the truth of themselves (`who I really am) as alien. They do this because they have to get into different characters everyday and not all that but people (their fans) perceive them as their delivered characters. These things become their reason of self alienation. Thus, the narrator of the invisible man was invisible because he was one of the victims of the racial discrimination in America. The narrator keeps struggling for freedom, identity and racial equality throughout the novel but in the end of the novel we find out that the narrator is still at the same place and scenario where he was when he started telling his story. This way the writer has made a colossal impact on the viewers as this ending shows that the black American have never got the ultimate result of their efforts for freedom and their endless efforts are, and have to be continued if they want to get the prestige in the society. When I read the story I got the feeling that anyone can become an invisible man anytime in his life and the reasons can be many. Even an instance can change the life of an individual and he can become a victim of the alienation or loneliness. Just like the little instance which is stated in Spark notes database, when the narrator relates an incident in which he accidentally bumped into a tall, blond man in the dark and as an outcome; the blond man called him an insulting name. In the force of anger the narrator attacked that man and demanded an apology. He threw the blond man to the ground, kicked him, and pulled out his knife, prepared to slit the man’s throat. Only at the last minute he came to his senses and realized that the blond man insulted him because he couldn’t really see him. The next day, narrator reads about the occurrence in the newspaper, just to find the attack described as a ‘mugging’. The narrator remarks upon the sarcasm of being mugged by an invisible man. (“Invisible Man”) Conclusion After going through all the details and analysis about the narrator’s position, crucial details of self-alienation and the racism issues between black people and white people, it becomes apparent that the narrator of the invisible man was not crazy or doing things just to make others suffer but there were strong reasons behind his actions. Everything he did had a reason behind it. The way he found himself invisible among the whites had reality involved and whites were really treating him in a different way because he was black. He surely was a victim of racism and was not over-reacting. He isolated himself in the hidden place for reasons. He did it because whites refused to see him as an actual, three dimensional person; thus, he depicted the white people as ‘blind’ and himself as an ‘invisible man’. Works Cited Bacuzmo. ALIENATION, the Road to Despair. Chapter 8. A measure of truth. 2010. Web. 16 Apr. 2011. Churchich, Nicholas. Marxism and alienation. Associated University Press. 1990. Web. 16 Apr. 2011. Cox, Judy. International Socialism, Quarterly journal of the Socialist Workers Party (Britain). July.1998. Web.16 Apr. 2011. Costas, J. and Fleming, P. Beyond dis-identification: A discursive approach to self-alienation in contemporary organizations. Mar.2009. Web. 19 Apr. 2011. Davids, Anthony. Alienation, Social Appreception, and Ego Structure. Journal of Consulting Psychology, Vol 19(1), Feb. 1955. Web. 16 Apr. 2011. Invisible Man. Spark Notes Database. n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2011. Loneliness. United States of America. Hazelden Foundation. March. 1986. Web.16 Apr. 2011. Seidlitz, Anne. Ralph Ellison An American Journey. American Masters database. 24 Aug.2005. Web. 16 Apr. 2011. Swarns, Rachel L. and Kantor, Jodi. In First Lady’s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery. 7 Oct. 2009. Web. 14 Apr. 2011. Waheed, M.A. From Self-Alienation to Self-Adjustment in Anita Desai’s “Where Shall We Go This Summer?”.n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2011. Read More